Publisher Description

Few men can say they have known Africa as Peter Hathaway Capstick has know it— leading safaris through lion country; tracking man-eating leopards along tangled jungle paths; running for cover as fear-maddened elephants stampede in all directions. And of the few who have known this dangerous way of life, fewer still can recount their adventures with the flair of this former professional hunter-turned-writer.
Based on Capstick's own experiences and the personal accounts of his colleagues, "Death in the Long Grass "portrays the great killers of the African bush— not only the lion, leopard, and elephant, but the primitive rhino and the crocodile waiting for its unsuspecting prey, the titanic hippo and the Cape buffalo charging like an express train out of control. Capstick was a born raconteur whose colorful descriptions and eye for exciting, authentic detail bring us face to face with some of the most ferocious killers in the world— underrated killers like the surprisingly brave and cunning hyena, silent killers such as the lightning-fast black mamba snake, collective killers like the wild dog. Readers can lean back in a chair, sip a tall, iced drink, and revel in the kinds of stories Hemingway and Ruark used to hear in hotel bars from Nairobi to Johannesburg, as veteran hunters would tell of what they heard beyond the campfire and saw through the sights of an express rifle.
As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, "Death in the Long Grass" takes us deep into the heart of darkness to view the Africa that few people have ever seen.

Author Biography

After giving up a career on Wall Street, Peter Hathaway Capstick moved to South Africa, where he became a professional game hunter and acclaimed writer. He lived there with his wife Fiona, until his death in 1996.

Review

"Peter Hathaway Capstick's 'Death in the Long Grass' continues to be one of the true classics of written hunting tales. I just read it again, and loved it just as much as when it was first published in the late 1970s." --The Wichita Eagle

Review Quote

"Peter Hathaway Capstick's 'Death in the Long Grass' continues to be one of the true classics of written hunting tales. I just read it again, and loved it just as much as when it was first published in the late 1970s." -- The Wichita Eagle

Excerpt from Book

Death in the Long Grass 1 Lion It is nearly three o''clock in the sweltering morning of September 2, 1974. In four hot, still hours dawn will hemorrhage like a fresh wound in the sky over the eastern Muchingas, the great, towering walls that confine the upper reaches of the Luangwa River in Zambia''s Eastern Province. In the anemic wash of a dying Central African moon, three canvas teints gleam bluely in a sparse grove of sausage trees near the water''s edge. One of them, older and more weather worn, is pitched fifty yards from the others. Behind its bleached cloth and netting walls, a slender white man sleeps fitfully, tossing in the humid spring silence as greasy sweat darkens the sheets of his camp bed. On the dirt floor beside the tent''s walls, a watery moonbeam glows on the scratched white stencil of a footlocker: Peter Hankin, Box 72, Chipata . Inside the travel-dented locker lie three flat five-packs of Kynoch 300-grain soft-point cartridges for the battered, silver-worn, old rifle, a Cogswell and Harrison, .375 Holland and Holland Magnum in caliber. But the rifle, as bush-scarred as the face of its owner, is not leaning in its usual place beside the bed. Operating in a photographic safari area, professional hunter Peter Hankin has had to leave it at his hunting camp, Chitangulu, forty miles downstream. His friends will later decide that even if he had the rifle now he would still have less than one minute to live. Fifty yards from Hankin''s tent, in the shadowy skeleton of a fallen muSassa tree, there is a tiny, silent movement. Dilated wide to gather the pale light, two hard, amber eyes flicker across the broken ground and lock on the indistinct form of the man sleeping behind the netting. Seconds pass, then the lioness rises and begins to ooze forward, gliding like a tawny wraith between deep clumps of shadow. There is no sound as she slips along on thick pads, the white sickles of her claws sheathed, the aching throb of hunger hollow in her chest and loins. At twenty yards she freezes, the thick, acrid man-scent dank in her nostrils. She stifles an involuntary growl, her black upper lip curled back to show thick, long fangs. For amoment she hesitates, but her ancestral fear of the smell is washed over by the desperation of her hunger. At five yards she gathers her hind legs beneath her flattened, lean body, the hind claws gripping the earth for purchase. The man-thing is still asleep, unaware of crouching death so near, his breathing deep and regular in the cat''s lain-back ears. In a flash of dark motion she is in the air, claws extended like naked linoleum knives, the light mosquito netting shredding before her charge. Her impact hurls the man from his bed and onto the ground. Before he is even awake, there is the soggy snap of crushing vertiebrae, then silence. For Peter Hankin, one of central Africa''s most experienced professional white hunters, the last safari is over. It is light before Hankin''s clients, unarmed and cowering in their tents while listening to the wet feeding sounds, can escape and seek help. In a few hours Joe Joubert, a professional hunter employed by Hankin''s safari firm, a Zambian game guard, and Joubert''s safari client, Samuel Lenher of Wilmington, Delaware, are driving hard along the bush road from Joubert''s camp at Zokwe to the scene of the tragedy. When they arrive, the lioness is still feeding on Hankin''s corpse, which has been dragged a few yards out of the tent. Before Joubert can come up with his express rifle, the Zambian foolishly wounds the man-eater with a blast of SG buckshot from his single-barrel-issue Greener shotgun/carbine. The big cat runs off into the bush where Joubert takes up the blood spoor. Over the next hour the lioness inscribes a large circle through the heavy riverine cover and incredibly, despite her wounds and the men following her, returns to the man she has killed and resumes feeding. Joubert, half-retching with horror and disgust, executes her with a shot from his .458 Brno, the 510-grain Winchester soft-point dropping the man-eater lifeless across the body of her victim. Inspection establishes that the lioness is in the prime of life and previously uninjured or disabled although very lean and, with macabre obviousness, hungry. A post-mortem on thebody of Peter Hankin determines that, mercifully, he died instantly of a broken neck from the lioness'' first bite.

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